The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Kobo ebook | November 10, 2011

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them.

The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.

Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance.

Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.

The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are no...

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Reviews

Rated 5 out of
5 by
Caleb from
Eye openingEvery sales professional should read this book. Early implementation stages and already seeing results!

Date published: 2014-04-25

Rated 5 out of
5 by
Jill_Donahue from
Change your thinking about what great reps do“Imagine a world where all your reps- or at least many more of them – performed like stars. What would that be worth to you?” (The Challenger Sale, page 15) Wouldn’t it be great if you could bottle what your best sales reps do and sprinkle it over all the rest? In the quest to do just that by understanding what top-performing sales reps do, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, performed an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps and discovered something that is shaking the ground as a breakthrough! They dethroned traditional beliefs and identified specifically who the stars are and what they do differently than the others. You may be surprised! Enjoy my summary of my top 3 lesson learned from The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation at http://www.actionablebooks.com/summaries/the-challenger-sale/